Saturday, February 19, 2011

Disn-A-Thon: Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

Disney version of fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk", featuring Mickey, Donald and Goofy in the main roles. Also contains another short film, re-released as "Bongo" [imdb]

I'll be short for this one. (Mostly because there's a game I want to play that just finished downloading.)

Fun and Fancy Free was essentially the merging of two(2) feature film concepts into one... It all starts off with our friend Jiminy Cricket singing a little song and segues into Dinah Shore singing and telling the story of Bongo, a little bear from a circus who wanted to live in the wild.

Bongo was actually devised as a follow-up to Dumbo, even going so far as to originally co-star many of the same characters in the same circus. This was all cut when they opted for the shorter "half of a feature film length" story.

The other half is taken up by Edgar Bergen and friends Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd telling the story of Mickey and The Beanstalk. Also originally to be much longer, it's both Mickey and Donald's return to the silver screen. Joined now by Goofy, they tell the story of Jack and The Beanstalk only involving Mickey and pals (of course).

I was never the fondest of Bongo, just because it seemed a bit dumb when I was younger, but it's really a nice little story. I was always more a fan of Mickey and The Beanstalk though, mostly due to the fun giant. I have always loved the voice and personality they gave the antagonist in this.

Anyhow, the DVD contains a short little documentary about the two features and why they were cut short. Not a bad special feature for their old slimmed-down Gold Collection line.

Each feature stands well alone, and they stand even better together in this film.